Problem Description

For centuries, palpation has been an important medical diagnostic tool. The efficacy of palpation is based on the fact that many diseases change the mechanical properties of tissues. Approaches to date have been to use conventional imaging methods to measure the mechanical response of tissue to mechanical stress. The resulting strains have been measured using ultrasound, CT, or MRI and the related elastic modulus has been
computed from biomechanical models of tissues.

In order to recover the mechanical properties of biological tissues we need to invert the displacement data measured by the MRE method. This inversion process requires the use of an accurate biomechanical model for tissues. The aim of this problem is to formulate new constitutive models that will be able to differentiate not only between normal and abnormal tissues, but may be more importantly, between benign and malignant tumors.

Study Group Report

The aim of this work is to formulate new mathematical models that
will be able to differentiate not only between normal and abnormal tissues, but, more importantly, between benign and malignant tumours. We present preliminary results of a tri-phasic model and numerical simulations of the effect of cellular adhesion forces on the mechanical properties of biological tissues.